Commentary: Bin the bucket list in 2026

LONDON: Is there anything quite so insipid, quite so emblematic of our age’s cultural rot, as the “bucket list”? My inbox is chock-a-block with it.

“Empty-nesters are more likely to invest in bucket-list treks abroad.” “What’s on your bucket list for mindfulness?” “THE NATION’S ULTIMATE TRAVEL BUCKET LIST REVEALED – BUT WHAT CAME TOP?” (Spoiler: the Northern Lights. It’s always the Northern Lights.) It is all so devoid of originality, of inspiration, of joie de vivre.

For those of you lucky enough to be unaware of its meaning, on account of being too disconnected from modern mediocrity, allow me to stultify – sorry, enlighten you. A “bucket list” is a checklist of all of the places you would like to go and things you would like to do (or think you should go and should do) before you die.

It seems to have been popularised by the late Rob Reiner’s 2007 film of the same name, which featured two terminally ill men who go around the world ticking things that they want to do off a list before they “kick the bucket” (an idiom whose origin, in turn, is contested, but that might derive from the idea of kicking away the bucket before you hang yourself). 

THE THINKING BEHIND BUCKET LISTS

With a brand new year upon us, some of you might be in the process of working out how many items you can tick off said list in 2026. And so, before I continue with my admonishment of you, allow me to say that I do understand the impulse to do this, and even see some value in the thinking that underlies it.

First, it is an inarguably positive thing to become more aware of your mortality. I find that the more I think and talk about the fact that I’m going to die, the more I want to live.

Second, it is surely an inherently worthy endeavour to try to live your life to the fullest, in an intentional way, rather than as a passive bystander who suddenly wakes up one day and realises that they haven’t done anything that has given their existence any meaning. I am even a fan of making some types of lists in order to achieve this.

But spending all your free time going around the world ticking off a bucket list – even the words irritate me – is not the way. The term has become totally detached from its original meaning (my inbox also contains emails about “fall bucket lists” and “summer bucket lists”, as if we only have a season to live) and is now formulaic rather than inspired. If you really want a reminder that you are mortal, why not lose the euphemism and call it a death list instead? 

Or you could lose the idea entirely. All it is doing, after all, is setting you up for a lifetime of “meh” at best, disappointment at worst. How many times have you made a trip to see something you were excited about and thought to yourself, “Is that it?” when you got there? I remember the crushing disappointment I felt, aged 21, at seeing the Hollywood sign for the first time (don’t even get me started on the Northern Lights).

It’s the unexpected sights that you might have missed when your head was down trying to find the tourist trap, and the spontaneous adventures that make life rich and exciting, not the ones that you arrive at armed with sky-high expectations and a selfie stick.

YOUR LIFE IS NOT A LISTICLE

Not that your social media followers would know if you were disappointed, of course. “Finally saw the Aurora Borealis! #bucketlist #travelgoals #dreambig #wanderlust”

 It is a particularly disorienting aspect of modern life that we construct so much of our identities around our personal brands – under the dictates of “profilicity”, to use the term coined by philosophers Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul D’Ambrosio – with the aim of pleasing not ourselves, not even our loved ones, but the unknowable “general peer”.

By treating our life as if it were a video game needing all the badges earned before it is complete – the same badges as everyone else, usually – we deprive ourselves of real joy and fulfilment. What are we to feel when we have ticked everything off, anyway? And what if novelty is not the primary source of happiness after all?

After many trips to Los Angeles, I have now come to love the Hollywood sign – it has become familiar and somehow comforting to me. Bucket list culture ignores the loveliness of returning again and again to the same place, getting to know the people and the culture and observing how it evolves.

So don’t spend your life going around crossing things off a list to post on social media. Don’t aim to die with a hard drive full of pictures of the Taj Mahal; aim to die with your heart full of love and laughter and memories of the humans and animals and art you have known instead. You are not your social media profile. Your life is not a listicle.